Unless otherwise indicated herein, the materials described in this section are not prior art to the claims in this application and are not admitted to be prior art by inclusion in this section.
A geographic location of a mobile computing device can be determined using many different techniques including based either on Global Positioning System (GPS) data or on data associated with a wireless access point having a known location, such as a cellular base station or an 802.11 access point. For example, a mobile computing device may receive a GPS signal and responsively determine its position on the face of the Earth. In another example, a mobile computing device may receive a signal from either a cellular base station or an 802.11 access point. The location of the mobile computing device can be estimated based on the location of either the cellular base station or an 802.11 access point. In some cases, the relative signal strength and/or relative time delays from multiple wireless access points can be used to estimate the position of the mobile computing device relative to the wireless access points.
In some instances, the geographic location of a mobile computing device may be estimated using data and/or signals from multiple different networks that communicate with the mobile device. Once a geographic location of the computing device is estimated, location-based services can be provided to the mobile computing device based on the location of the mobile computing device. For instance, the computing device can generate location-sensitive information on a map, such as an indication of the current location of the computing device.
Some mobile computing devices may additionally or alternatively be equipped to allow for determining a usage context of the device based on information gathered by one or more sensors that are associated with the computing device. For example, data from one or more sensors on the device may be analyzed to determine that the user of the device is presently: watching television, driving a car, on a plane, riding a bicycle, walking to work, etc. Once a usage context is determined, the device behavior may be modified in accordance with the determined context. For instance, the user interface may be modified to facilitate user interaction with the device in a given context (e.g., voice commands may be activated while the user is driving).